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ASK MARTHA: Our Birthday Interview with Martha Stewart

Martha Looks to the Future of Gardening

For the past year, Miracle-Gro has partnered with Martha Stewart – America’s preeminent gardener – and she provides expert gardening know-how for the home gardener, based on her decades-long passion for gardening. Recently, we were lucky to sit down with Martha in her Bedford kitchen while she simultaneously made not one – but two jams from her own fruit. We discussed her take on gardening today and for the future.

Miracle-Gro: Your first gardening book, Martha Stewart’s Gardening Month by Month, was published thirty-three years ago! In the dedication, you point out the importance of gardening for the future - on behalf of children. What new gardening developments are you excited about that help achieve your goal? 

Martha: I think what I’m most excited about in the future of gardening is the diligent, well-meaning scientifically-based groups who are forming organic gardening clubs, organizations, and foundations to make sure there will be a future, not only in farming, but also in home gardening - groups like MOFGA (Maine organic farmers and gardeners’ association), NOFA, NY and NOFA - VT– (Northeast organic farmers association) and CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers), and Stone Barns (Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture) is located near here in Westchester, NY and is a very serious group of organic farmers. These organizations have really intelligent and well-meaning objectives.

Miracle-Gro: You are active on many social media platforms like Instagram; what do you see as the influence of social media on gardening?

Martha: I think social media has done a tremendously good thing in the proliferation of gardening and flowers, and orchard and organic gardening sites. I find myself going down rabbit holes - like all of us – (laughs) looking at spectacular gardens, spectacular growing techniques, spectacular new methods of propagating and I think it has spurred a real grounded interest in gardening, farming and back yards.

I learn a lot on social media… in a very short time. I learn how extraordinary things happen. I see “hacks” - they’re not exactly hacks - but more of a new generational influence on the way things that have been done for a very long time, and they’re still the best way to do things.

I am very active on my personal Instagram handle and my blog Instagram. I read all the feedback of my followers and always learn from them.

Photo: From Martha's Instagram blog

Miracle-Gro: You keep up to date on technology, as well – especially new equipment, tools, etc. How has technology changed gardening?

Martha: I think in terms of harvesting, technology has helped tremendously. I just watched a gentle machine shake the ripe cherries off a tree, and you couldn’t hand pick those cherries off the tree in the ten minutes it took the machine. The way the machine gently shakes the tree - it’s fascinating to watch, extraordinarily efficient and I love that we’re learning about it through social media.

What I’m looking at are time-saving devices. I’m looking at ways to multiply your productivity that can be done healthfully and sustainably.

Miracle-Gro: So, a follow up question; You’re constantly looking for a better way to do things; what advances in gardening have you been most excited about? 

Martha: Well, one that has become extremely popular, and I’ve been partly responsible, is the raised bed. The box method of vegetable gardening. Not only does it contain a garden in a smaller space, but also, I think the productivity is really something to behold. We’re working with Miracle-Gro to introduce people to soil mediums that are the best dirt in the world. And we want to use that good dirt to grow our vegetables without the addition of a lot of other things. So, I’m very excited about that. 

I’m also very excited about the semi-dwarf and dwarf trees in an orchard, which take up less space but are equally productive, easier to pick and more manageable to prune. I just planted an orchard of 220 trees and I’m getting a really nice fruit production of many, many kinds. 

Miracle-Gro: What did you plant?

Martha: I planted pretty much everything that will grow in my area (Zone 7a) (USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map) including medlars, quince, and Asian pears - I’m so excited about the fruit I will get – oh, and sour cherries. I love Montmorency cherries so much, and now I have them. My only problem is keeping the squirrels and the multiple birds out of my fruits!

Photo: These are the fruits of the medlar, Mespilus germanica – a small deciduous tree and member of the rose family.

Miracle-Gro: You mentioned raised beds - How does raised bed gardening encourage beginning gardeners? 

Martha: I think raised bed gardening is a really nice, and it’s not a new way to garden. The parterre gardens of ancient France and England are certainly examples of raised bed gardening. 

You can have a garden on your terrace. You can have a garden on a patio, you can have a garden on a balcony of an apartment in a raised bed. It’s not messy, it’s neat. You can grow what you want and where you want it. And use the soils that are available now. These raised bed garden soils. Especially the ones we’re working on with Miracle-Gro, have produced – for me – 12-pound broccolis, 17-pound napa cabbages! I never got that kind of production in my in-ground garden! 

Miracle-Gro: Your vegetable garden is so productive, and you use it all! Can you talk about how you use what you grow?

Martha: I grow a lot. Because I am experimenting --while I am writing a book on gardening and while I am working with the team at Miracle-Gro. I’m doing three things: I’m feeding my daughter and her family, I am feeding people on the farm, and I am nurturing myself with really, really fine organically grown vegetables. So, my spinach tastes like spinach. I make my green juice every morning out of the spinach, out of the mint, out of the parsley, out of the celery, out of the cucumbers that I grow. Both in my outside garden, as well as in my greenhouse in raised beds. So, I grow twelve months a year now. 

Martha’s Daily Green Juice

Ingredients:

  • 1 large bunch spinach, washed and drained
  • 2 celery stalks with leaves
  • 1 Kirby cucumber
  • 1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
  • 1 small bunch fresh mint leaves
  • 1 one-inch piece of fresh ginger, unpeeled
  • 2 unpeeled orange wedges

Press all ingredients through a juicer. Stir and serve immediately.

Miracle-Gro: You’ve told us that your granddaughter, Jude, is very interested in gardening and yet she lives in New York City. How does she practice gardening both there and when she’s here visiting you?

Martha: Well, when she comes here, she’s in the garden. Not only taking pictures of everything, but also picking. Her mother is also a picker. I’m not the best picker. I like the growing part. It’s so interesting to watch Jude go through my greenhouse. She will take the tiniest plant and put it in a pot, and then she will document with photography, and by drawing, how the plant grows on her windowsill in New York City. And the drawing is beautiful, and the nurturing of those plants is beautiful, and the photography is beautiful. And what’s interesting is that if she sees something that she doesn’t know, she will go straight to Apps like PictureThis, PlantNet, or iNaturalist, or she will go straight to a website that will tell her what she’s looking at. 

Those apps are so valuable to the modern gardener. It is such a nice thing to have, and there’s also a great one for birds and their songs too! It’s called Merlin. 

Miracle-Gro: As a teacher, how would you encourage first-time gardeners and beginning gardeners to make a start? 

Martha: My best advice is don’t be overly ambitious because that will often lead to disappointment. Start small. Read seed catalogs and choose your seeds. I like to grow from seed. If you are more timid, buy well-grown plants, seedling plants, from a reputable store. The Bonnie plants that I have grown in my garden are really very nice, and I’m pleased at how successfully they mature into beautiful, beautiful vegetables and herbs. Just as nice as the plants I grow from seed. 

And be prepared to give effort. Be prepared to work! You have to weed, you have to water, you have to feed. I keep saying this to everybody. My big motto is: “you eat every day; your plants want to eat also. You drink every day. Don’t take a drink until you water that plant that looks a little bit wilted on your windowsill, or in your garden. Don’t you dare take a drink!” (Martha laughs)

Miracle-Gro: When you think about your whole garden - vegetables, herbs, fruit, and the beautiful flowers you grow, and I know you love trees - do you have a personal favorite? 

Martha: I love plants! And in that category of plants, there are trees, there are flowers, there are bulbs, there are shrubs, there are fruiting trees... there are so many fabulous things that one can grow, and I like to experiment. I’m very curious about what I can get to grow in my area (zone 7a). So, I’m a huge plant person. Yes, I’m a plant nerd. And it drives a lot of my friends crazy because they aren’t, and yet now with the curiosity in gardening and the plant apps, guess what? You can now identify things. You can see something you really want to grow and then you’ll try it and you’ll be successful, and you will get more plants. And I keep talking to experts – I go to botanical gardens all the time and I always see something that I have not yet experimented with. 

Miracle-Gro: You travel a lot, and you get inspired everywhere you go. You also host many garden tours in your yard. What do you hope people will get out of touring your gardens and seeing your experiments? 

Martha: This year I had six major garden tours in two months, and that’s a lot of work, because not only does the garden have to look good, but I also spend the time guiding the tours myself, along with the help of Ryan McCallister (my head gardener), and those who have worked in the garden. This is a very nice way to engender friendships, to learn from others, and also to teach a tremendous number of people your own gardening techniques. There are many questions that come from my garden tours. We cover each of the tours with a blog which is on-line on marthastewart.com and a concurrent blog which is called marthastewartblog on Instagram that we just started this year. 

Photo: One of my garden tours this year with The Garden Club of America.

Miracle-Gro: Let’s circle back to new gardeners, actually all gardeners, for a minute. They are concerned about things dying in their garden. How do you cope with that? What do you learn from it, and how do you encourage people to not worry and move on?

Martha: Well, one thing you can do is start small. And be very conscientious with the plants that you initially put in the ground. Really, really water, feed and weed. Those are three terribly important tasks in the garden. And watch! Water, Feed, Weed and Watch!

Miracle-Gro: And because you are a big composter, you make use of everything you compost to encourage new life.

Martha: I do create a tremendous amount of compost for re-distribution in the woodland, in the fields and in the gardens every single year. And I’m talking about a lot! Many, many, many cubic yards are created here on this property because we recycle all the manure from all the animals. We recycle all the leaves that fall from the trees. We recycle any old and rotting hay from the fields. We hire a tub grinder, which is a wood grinder that’s bigger than a truck, every single year to grind up all branches and all dead and dying trees. But, and this is important, we do not recycle weeds. So, when we weed a garden and have buckets and buckets of weeds, we don’t add those to the compost. Don’t recycle your weeds because it just continues the cycle of invasives in the garden. Shake off the soil from the roots and then all of those weeds go into a dumpster.

Photo: Here is an excavator being used to pick up material with its large “jaws grab” bucket attachment and drop it into the tub grinder.

Miracle-Gro: Can you talk a bit about your history with organic gardening? 

Martha: I was a member of the Fairfield Organic Gardeners Club, early on, when I first moved to Westport, Connecticut in Fairfield County. I became a member of FOGS – we were called, and we were diligent about recycling, about not throwing away vegetable matter, but recycling it.

Now, I have a specific method at my home because I don’t compost the kitchen waste. Most of the kitchen waste, if it’s edible in any way, goes straight to the chickens - and the peacocks, the geese, the pheasants, the guinea fowl and the turkeys. They all get the kitchen waste. They also get a tremendous amount of cut up fruits and vegetables from a local market who is very kind to save me all the peels of the cantaloupes, and the trimmings from lettuce leaves. That’s invaluable in making delicious eggs. 

Miracle-Gro: (Martha is making two jams from her recently harvested fruit while we talk.) While we talk, you are also making two jams! Blackberry and Raspberry. When you think about your lifelong experience cooking what you grow - fruits, vegetables, and herbs, do you think that natural progression (growing, cooking and eating) helps the new gardener understand the connection between edible gardening and enriching their life?

Martha: Oh, I think it does. You’re so proud of what you’re making, you’re thinking, this is extraordinary! You can smell the goodness!

Miracle-Gro: As you look at all the garden products in the marketplace - soils, mulches, fertilizers, growing mediums - what are you most excited about?

Martha: Well, I’m excited about anything that will help me grow organically, the fruits and vegetables and flowers that I really want to grow. I look for the ingredients – I want a clear and concise description on a package. I want the package itself to be smart – I don’t want a lot of wasted packaging. I don’t want to open 25 small plastic bottles to get what I need. I really pay attention to that, and I think Miracle-Gro is doing a great job of innovating and re-doing its thinking in terms of the organic gardener, from beginner to expert. And in paying attention to the customer’s desires – we have to be modern, conscious, sustainable and caring of our environment.

Miracle-Gro: As we conclude, in thinking about the future of gardening, are you positive about the future of gardening?

Martha: I am an optimist, and I have always been an optimist, and I want to be proven correct.

Article by Martha Stewart, as part of the Growing with Martha Stewart partnership.